A Portrait for Andrea

April 7, 2014

I have a pretty portrait commission to share with you guys today! :)

Andrea is a talented, beautiful hairstylist from Seattle–you can check out her work and learn more about her here! She’s ordered a few things from my Etsy shop and recently asked if I’d make a portrait illustration for her to use on business cards and other self promo.

Andrea is fabulous to work with and knew pretty specifically what she was looking for. “I would want my face with maybe like flowers around it and incorporate scissors, combs, blow dryer, etc into it because I’m a hairdresser… Silly thing, but I love cats so i wanted to incorporate that somehow. I was thinking like a cat ear headband?”

For the two sketches, I interpreted her requests pretty literally. She also mentioned loving a pastel color palette, so I stuck to the same colors for each. The first features more realistically rendered flowers while the second has a more stylized oval frame of cartoony flowers. She liked the pink background on the second sketch and that the hair accessories were more subtle. We both loved the idea of the pearl cat ears and I thought a leopard print top would be another cute reference to being a cat lover. :)

I had so much fun working on this one! Andrea was really fun to draw and our interests and tastes are so similar, it felt like something I would draw myself just for fun! I’m really pleased with the way this one turned out. xo

this is so wonderful! i love hearing about your process! i need to think up a silly reason to get a portrait from you because who doesn’t need a cartoon of themselves frolicking with kittens in a pile of books? ;)